Some clarification on the new Rake filler script. Last night aggixx found this post. He built a preliminary T13H script and verified that the poster (Melenkor) was correct as he was getting a 2.5K dps increase in Simulationcraft.

aggixx, Tinderhoof and I got onto Mumble last night and spent about 4 hours tuning a level 85 script around Rake fillers, both in Ovale and in Simulationcraft. aggixx was editing several simc scripts and testing them while I was editing a new Ovale script which all three of us were testing. By the time we were done, the dps increase was up to 4.6k and we had a playable Ovale script. Not all of the dps increase is due to replacing Shred with Rake. Some of it is due to actually tuning the rotation, something that was not done on the previous 5.04 Ovale scripts I produced.

Things you will notice in this script. While Rake is the new filler, it will still call for Shred (or Mangle if you select the "Frontal attack" toggle for Ultraxion) to extend the Rip. However, it will not extend Rips if you are already at 5 combo points. This means that there will be many times that you do not extend Rip. Also, the script is very aggressive about using Ferocious Bites, doing so with the remaining Rip time as low as 6 seconds. The result of this is that Rip uptime will likely be between 85-90% on a Patchwerk type of fight. Not surprisingly, Rake uptime will be very close to 100%. Basically, the rotation is trying to do a lot more finishers that what we were used to doing pre-5.04, even if it means the average duration of Rip is lower. This makes sense if you consider the impact of Soul of the Forest on the rotation where every combo point that is consumed in a finisher returns 4 energy. Pre-5.04, wasting combo points was acceptable as long we we kept the rotation intact.

I have one more change I plan to make to this script, which is to auto-detect the presence of Glyph of Shred so that I can optimize the "Frontal attack" code to call for Shred to extend Rip rather than Mangle during Berserk/TF. This will be a small dps increase and will only be meaningful on Ultraxion.

It remains to be seen what Blizzard will do about this rotation. I doubt they anticipated this when they buffed Rake.

Thing in mind is that there is no easy tweak for blizzard to fix it. All in all we shall be looking forward to some huge overhaul what mastery stat should be doing to current version and how AP vs weapon DPS interracts between various skills.

I'd look forward making mastery not buff only bleeds but all attacks, which would be completly boring from their POV but something that is easy to tweak.

On the other hand, maybe finding a new solution what mastery should do would be a good idea and give them heads up.
Sth that I do think would be along the lines "mastery increase your chance to clearcast" and/or "increase energy regen" or anything else. The whole mastery buffing bleeds is [email protected]# at this point.

Another thing that should be changed is the AP vs weapon DPS value used for certain skills. It is stupid that rake uses only AP coef while for example shred mainly wDPS.

On the side, I doubt we would see such overhaul before MoP 5.1 patch or sth. It is too short time before release to open the door and step into new direction.
I think we remember early in cataclysm when bleeds were nerfed and dmg was shifted towards direct dmg becouse of PVP. Seems like they did not learn the lesson, unless the whole PVP thing that is coming with MoP is gonna change how it will end up (pvp power and res).

I know everyone's heads are kinda cocked to the side with this new development. Like Aggixx said we arn't likely to see this rotation still be top DPS when we hit 90, but for now, I doubt they are going to muck with something that can be very distablizing for just 3 more weeks.

There is going to be jaring adjustment to the new script, so I figured I would let you all know about some odd stuff you may see that is actually intended and correct.

1. For the first time ever we do care about wasting combo points above 5. You will see the script suggest to use FB a lot more at the cost of Rip uptime. With the Rake filler rotaition we get a lot more combo points and it ends up being better to make use of as many as possible instead of Raking, or Shredding past 5. You will have more Rip downtime then you are used to. This is expected and ok.
2. You will notice that the script will wait to suggest Shred to extend Rip until it has 4 seconds left (It will suggest Mangle if you check attack from the front). You may also see that you will sometimes not extend Rip fully. This is expected and the script is choosing to do so based on resources on hand.
3. You may also see that Shred is suggested more often then the needed 3 times to extend Rip. This is a work around to a current bug in Ovale. Ovale isn't able to count the times we have exteneded Rip to know when to stop telling us to shred. The work around is to just use Shred until its time to clip Rip. The dps loss on this is small, so following the script after 3 won't hurt you to much. If you are using an addon that can count extentions you can replace the remaining suggestions with Rake if you wish. Again it won't be a huge difference, so just go with what you are comfortable with.
4. This isn't specific to the Rake script, but folks should know it. If someone else in your raid is doing the Weakened Armor like the Warrior or Guardian tanks you will need to turn FF off in the script (click the rotation window to bring up the options). Ovale can't tell if other people are applying the debuff and will suggest FF every 7 seconds (on cooldown) because it doesn't see yours is overwritten and thinks it fell off. If you are seeing this happen turn off FF and just use your chosen addon to make sure the Weakened Armor debuff is kept up.

If you see additional oddities or if you have questions please let us know.
*Dang Leaf, I swear I refreshed before starting the post. Just to quick for me*

I'm a little confused (lol understatement) about this new development. I'm assuming in order for this new rotation to be a true dps gain, you'd need a high amount of mastery. My question is how much mastery do we need? The original post claimed he had 70% mastery at 85, but I don't know how that's even possible. After switching every possible reforge over to mastery, I was only able to get 55% mastery. Is that enough?

Last edited by mineko on Mon Sep 03, 2012 7:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hey Mineko. I think 70 may be out of range, but with full raid buffs 55% becomes 65% (new might). You will be just fine. We didn't get an exact number, but as Aggixx said his friends 398 gear was just fine. Given the more you have the bigger the gain, but if you are in full 383 LFR gear I think you would still see a DPS up, just not 6-9%.

I just replaced 5.4.12 with 5.4.13. 5.4.13 auto-detects Glyph of Shred which is useful for rip extending when in front on Ultraxion. It now tells you to shred instead of mangle if you have "Frontal attack" selected.

A lot of the changes and tweaks Leaf has added not only help the Rake rotation, they will be able to let us transition into 90 smoother. And to be honest it's fun messing around with it till 2 in the morning.

Is that script meant for level 90? Since on level 85 I couldnt get any noticable dps increase? Did 3 trys on l85 target dummy with both script for rake and using my own instincts, both came out around 35k dps.

The script being updated now is for level 85. When MoP hits and we have had some time to make adjustments a new version for 90 will be released. If you want to get a side by side comparision just take the first script posted and run 3 times, and then take the second script and run it 3 times and take a look at the difference.

Mihir wrote:So what kind of relative stat values for reforging should i be looking at with the priorities provided by this script? Something like mastery > crit > haste > expertise/hit like in T11?

edit: running some sims seems to confirm this; except that mastery is waaay ahead of the others. Also wtf is up with weapon damage, i guess using mostly rake really hurts the value of that :p

wdmg: 3.93
agi 6.17
mastery 3.78
crit 2.41
haste 2.28
hit/exp 2.17

These are somewhat similar to the values I got when I ran scale factors. WDps took a small dive with 5.0.4, and switching to Rake put it down far far lower. Agility goes up because of how well it scales with Rake, and well... mastery... yeah. I did get a higher value on Hit/Exp although I only ran 25k iterations.

I spent some time on the target dummy with this script, it feels like the energy pooling when spamming rake could be better. It seemed like sometimes it suggests to spend all available energy on Rake and then shortly afterwards not having enough energy for more important abilities.

Mihir wrote:I spent some time on the target dummy with this script, it feels like the energy pooling when spamming rake could be better. It seemed like sometimes it suggests to spend all available energy on Rake and then shortly afterwards not having enough energy for more important abilities.

The filler rules have not changed, they are simply calling Rake in place of Shred (sometimes it calls Shred in place of Rake to extend a Rip and delay overwriting a Rake). I did increase the TF window for Rake spamming to try to burn all the energy out because Rake uses so much less energy than Shred it takes longer. I don't think Rake is the culprit for what you are experiencing.

One side effect of using Rake for a filler is that in some cases the Shreds for extending Rip come together right before Rip falls off, and those will eat up a lot of energy because they are not pooled. Back in the Shred filler days (i.e. last week) most of the time the Rip extensions happened as normal combo points subject to pooling rules.

To me, the most awkward part of the script is the super aggressive FB code which often happens 6 seconds before Rip is going to fall off, and leaves you with both low energy and no combo points. It is even worse if all of the rip extension Shreds have already been cast. I was thinking about varying when the Rip threshold on the FB conditional based on the Rip extension counter, but I did not want to do that without simming it at the same time and currently I am not setup to sim as aggixx has been doing that (also, it may not be possible to do this in simc right now - I think the counter is expressed as a boolean and not a count). As awkward as it feels, the last time we measured it, the FB conditional adds about 600dps and the dps goes down each second over 6 that we set it to.

If we dropped Soul of the Forest and went to Force of Nature, the rotation would feel very different, probably smoother, but it is not clear how it would sim out at level 85. Given how close the two abilities are at level 90, I am guessing that we could optimize a rotation for Force of Nature that would pull ahead of Soul of the Forest on a Patchwerk fight.